Page 30 of Savagely Mated (Shared Mates #1)

D arcy

The thing about accidents is sometimes you don’t know how much damage you’ve done until later.

I wake up the next morning, and I can barely fucking move.

It’s not the cane lines. They don’t help, but they’re not the reason getting up feels like pushing through aching Jell-O.

Everything bends, so I don’t think anything is broken, but God, it does not feel good to move.

What I need is a heat pack and a lie down.

I know that’s not going to happen. Einar can never know what I did last night.

I sneak around for a little bit, looking for Kirin or Rafe, thinking one of them might make some excuse for me, but they’re both gone.

I end up putting on the damn uniform that Einar expects me to wear, the thick stiff fabric feeling unpleasant against my skin.

These fucking uniforms suck. They were designed by someone who doesn’t understand that being rubbed by something that feels like it’s been starched by a vengeful god all day is the most distracting thing possible.

It also has a high collar that doesn’t really even fit girls, so it jabs into my chin every time I try to put my head down a little bit.

I hate this uniform. I didn’t hate the academy before, even though I snuck out all the time, but I think I am starting to hate it now. It used to be my only option, but now it feels like a prison I keep being pushed back into.

I straighten the jacket and adjust the britches and boots. It’s all very neat looking, but it truly feels awful to wear. Maybe the stiffness of the uniform will explain how awkwardly I move.

“Darcy! Breakfast!” I hear Einar call my name. Another awful day is beginning.

Einar

It is yet another day of being back in the academy and frankly I’d still rather not be here. Making polite conversation with other instructors, many of whom are both awed and slightly suspicious of me and my intentions, is not easy.

The fact that the director talked me back into teaching works in my favor. The story that I came across a runaway and decided my influence was needed certainly works. But I think everybody knows that there is a certain strangeness to my sudden reappearance on the scholastic scene.

I left with something of a dramatic exit several years ago, not planning on returning.

I had become entirely devoted to the Blood, and I think they knew that, though they would never have said it out loud.

Calling one of the academy’s most prominent scholars a terrorist would be absolutely scandalous.

People want to believe the best of me, and it is my job to let them believe.

I have to keep my wits about me. I am surrounded by enemies. Another way to think of it is I am the enemy, infiltrating the heart of the mainstream tyranny. Another way to think of it is…

“Move, Darcy!” I snap the words with some urgency because Darcy just got hit, and not for the first time.

I’m combat training Darcy’s cohort, and they’re sparring. She’s half the size of a lot of the young men she’s training with, and it is very clear they give her no quarter. They’re not using real swords, and that is a good thing, because she’d be missing an arm and damn near a head by now.

Something is off with Darcy. She’s slower than usual, and her form is wrong.

Not in the sense that she doesn’t know what she’s doing; I’ve seen her fight for real, and I know she has near impeccable form.

It looks like she’s compensating for something.

She’s fighting the way someone who has been previously wounded fights, favoring one leg, and not moving with nearly as much energy or alacrity.

“Alright! That’s it. Go get cleaned up and head to your next sessions,” I call out. “Not you, Darcy.”

She’s turned away from me, but I see her shoulders slump.

She is my mate. I feel a near constant attraction to her, and a care that goes beyond mere carnal interest. I want her to be happy when she sees me. I don’t want her to cower like a beaten dog. The contrast between what I want for her and what I know I have to do to her is brutal.

“C’mere,” I say, crooking my finger at her as she turns around. The guys are filing out of the arena; they’ll be hitting the showers and heading off to their next classes. I don’t have to worry about them. I have to worry about the young woman in front of me.

She gives me a sulky look, but she does as she is told, walking up to me and making the effort to try to look normal as she does. I can see the limp she’s trying to hide. It is clear as day to me. She doesn’t know that her gait is as known to me as every other part of her.

“What have you done to yourself?”

Her eyes dart from side to side. She’s not good at hiding guilt. I will have to work with her on that. When she lies to the king, she will have to be absolutely convincing. “Nothing.”

“Don’t hide injuries from me, Darcy.”

She looks instantly guilty. Another thing she is going to need to learn to not do. I hope she’s more convincing at lying to people who are not me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lies. I resist the urge to call her out for the shitty dishonesty. It’s not about that right now. I just keep looking at her, holding her gaze, until she works out that I have no intention of letting the matter drop.

“You’re going to be mad at me,” she says. “So I’m fine.”

That tells me she got hurt doing something she shouldn’t. Not a simple accident. I wonder if the others know about it. They should have told me if they did, but our loyalty has taken many different forms of late. Things are getting complicated.

“I caned you yesterday, didn’t I?”

“Yeah.” She acknowledges that fact with some concern, but not a lot of formality.

“Do you think lying to me today is a good idea?”

“No.”

This has gone on long enough. There’s clearly some kind of physical injury that she is hiding, and I need to know what it is.

“Stand still,” I order her. I lift up the side of her shirt and immediately see abrasions and bruising that definitely weren’t there yesterday. Somehow between doing her homework and now, this girl has managed to get herself black and blue.

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” she says, still lying terribly. I am sure that fighting in this state must have been hell for her. There could be underlying damage too, with bruising like that. Internal bleeding, even. She’d rather die than admit she’s not well.

“Come with me,” I say. “I need to inspect you properly.”

She follows me sheepishly out of the training arena, back to the privacy of the female changing room. It’s little more than a closet, due to the very low numbers of women in the academy.

“Strip. Everything.”

She hesitates for a moment, then gives in, pulling off her top slowly and removing her pants even more carefully.

She really is a beautiful creature, but there’s road rash all the way up her left side, not to mention a lot of bruising.

That more than explains the reduction in her movements.

She looks like she’s been hit by something—or hit something herself.

“Are you going to tell me what happened, or are you going to make me guess?”

Darcy shrugs, her eyes on the floor. She looks like she’s sorry, and it’s possible that she is. I can guess what happened.

“Crashed a bike, hm?”

“Maybe,” she sniffs. I don’t think these tears are from guilt. I think they’re from fear. She’s afraid of the trouble she’s going to be in now that I know what she’s done. She’s not worried about being injured, or having damn near killed herself. She’s worried about me.

Rafe’s little speech didn’t convince me I’d gone too far, but this does make me think I’ve miscalculated things. I want a respectful level of fear. I don’t want her hiding things that matter. That’s counterproductive.

She lifts her eyes to me just a little. “What are you going to do to me?”

“I’m taking you home. You need painkillers and rest, and probably a doctor.”

“Are you mad at me?”

I pause for a moment, not certain how to answer that question. She’s hurt. She’s vulnerable. She’s struggling to fit into the world I am defining for her. Being angry at her will not help.

“I’m not happy you’ve hurt yourself. I don’t know it happened, but I can guess it was one of your fits of rebellious temper gone wrong.”

“It’s because you hate me,” she says. “This happened because you hate me.”

Well, of all the absolutely manipulative things to say.

“Excuse me?”

“You and the others. You… nobody is nice to me.” Her lower lip quivers.

“Darcy, you go out of your way to act in ways that make it almost impossible to be nice to you. If you want me to be nice, you can’t act like a little hellion. I had to discipline you, and now…” I sigh.

I am sure she intellectually understands everything I am saying. But that doesn’t matter because what she’s saying isn’t intellectual. It’s emotional.

“And you abandoned me.”

“What? When did I abandon you?” I am even more confused, but I assume what she’s saying is not coming from a place of logic. It’s just all hurt emotion.

“When I was little,” she says. “You knew I was here and you left me here. I know you knew because Kirin told me that’s how you worked out how to find me. You knew me. And you left me.”

She is looking at me as if I betrayed her, and for a moment, I have that gut-punch feeling of guilt that makes me wonder if I did.

“I was stuck here my whole life, and nobody cared. Ever.”

“Darcy…”

“I don’t even know how I got my fucking name,” she sobs. “Nobody remembers.”

“We’re going to talk about this,” I tell her. “But for now, I want you to put your clothes back on. We’re going.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the doctor.”

“There’s a doctor here.”

“I don’t want the academy doctor reporting this incident.”

Darcy

So he’s covering up. Not because he cares, but because there’s a plan bigger than me, that happens to need me, and it’s important I don’t fuck it up by existing too hard outside of it.